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Fifteen years earlier, Virtue's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Fey, had considered themselves fortunate in their two children; both Virtue and Ingenio were healthy and attractive, neither were rebellious, and both wanted to please. No easy task with parents who expected their offspring to reject earthly delights in favour of spiritual development.

Virtue Fey, however, also wanted to live in the same real, physically exciting world as her friends, not sit around nurturing her spirit with meditation and self-denial. It didn't make sense and she said so, repeatedly, causing her parents to label her unreliable and easy prey for sexual predators.

Unable to please her parents, Virtue sought solace in food until someone yelled 'Hey Fatty Fey!' from across the street. That triggered a bout of bulimia just on time to give her an attractive sylph-like figure that would be a benefit for life. As food was now off the list of pleasures, she indulged in marathon bouts of self-pleasure, which, she soon realised, was better than eating because it could be kept secret and left her feeling dreamy and contented—a state her parents fortunately confused with spiritual serenity. Masturbation is notoriously addictive and Virtue rapidly progressed from simple thigh massage to complex and intricate techniques that afforded hours of exquisite delight and gratifyingly explosive orgasms. The resulting ecstatic whimpers, her brother Ingenio warned her, could not be mistaken for spiritual rapture, so she ought to put a pillow over her head.

Ingenio, although three years younger, outstripped his sister both intellectually and physically. 'Your children are perfect representations of Yin and Yang,' a spiritual guru had once declared in an effort to curry favour when attempting to sign the Feys up for a course of his lectures.

Ingenio understood but couldn't sympathise with his parents' fixation on spirituality, privately rejecting their insistence that the spirit was separate from the physical body. When he was eleven years old he suggested that because the contemplation of spiritual things was performed by the brain, a physical organ, then spirit and body couldn't be as separate as his parents insisted. His abject apology when accused of heterodox rebellion allayed their anger, and as he was canny enough to never again evince the slightest doubt about their increasingly insane beliefs, he became the reliable, sensible, trusted son who could do no wrong.

Both Police Officer Fey and his Social Worker wife were obliged to work shifts, which meant there were many times when neither parent was at home to guard their offspring. When the children's babysitting grandparents retired to the Gold Coast, eleven-year-old Ingenio was appointed guardian of fourteen-year-old Virtue when both parents were at work. The decision pleased both children, who trusted each other implicitly, even though the only thing they had in common was implacable opposition to their oddball parents. Making the best of things, they escaped boredom by playing games, sharing secrets, surfing the Internet, and planning their future lives.

When Ingenio had his first wet dream, it was with Virtue he celebrated, just has he had been the first to know, observe and assist when she began to menstruate. They became avid subscribers of Internet health sites that explained how and why their bodies were changing, and kept photographic diaries of their bodily functions and changes - which they reckoned couldn't come quickly enough. The future was somewhere they longed to be… independent and free of parental oversight.

Ingenio's unsatisfyingly messy wet dreams ceased when masturbation commenced, which provided another activity for the siblings to share and discuss in detail. Although always a solo activity, the pleasure was sometimes enhanced by facing each other on a bed while demonstrating their latest method of achieving ecstasy. Ingenio's interest was intellectual and scientific. Virtue's was in being admired. Neither felt sexually attracted to the other. Observing politely and not interfering was the rule, and only headless photos were posted on the Internet under their noms de plume.

Virtue was never allowed to leave the house alone. If she went to a friend's house, Ingenio went too. If one or other of the parents couldn't drop them off and pick them up, they had to call a taxi. Afraid of spiritual contamination of their house, their children's school friends were not allowed to visit. This suited Ingenio who liked school, but needed to keep his two lives separate. When Virtue's best friend, Angelique Tollirint, asked her to come after school to play, Ingenio reluctantly agreed to accompany her, imagining a boring afternoon of girl talk.

Angelique had a brother, Constantine, a year older than Ingenio, who was being home-schooled while his school Principal decided whether to let him return after he'd attacked several other boys with knives, and spray-painted obscenities on the walls. He had also been apprehended by the police for breaking shop windows, stealing money from parking metres and setting fire to parked cars. The police had warned his parents that next time he would be incarcerated in a Boy's Remand Centre from which he would emerge a hardened criminal.

Both parents were at their wit's end, unable to understand why the boy they loved was doing such stupid things. When asked, he shrugged and refused to speak. Impotence had rendered their lives intolerable. A psychiatrist mumbled autism and prescribed tranquilisers, which they tossed away. His brain needed all it's cells sparking properly if he was to solve his problem. The lad wasn't basically evil; he always apologised after doing something stupid, but seemed incapable of change.

And then Angelique's pretty friend Virtue arrived one day after school with her twelve-year-old brother, who saw Constantine out in the garden, ran out and started chatting. The mother watched nervously, waiting for her son to attack the intruder. Instead he laughed, grabbed Ingenio's hand and dragged him off to the tool shed where his father had given him a workbench for his personal use. And there they remained until it was time to go home. At Constantine's insistence, Ingenio willingly promised to come back the next day.

Constantine was calm that evening at dinner, did his homework, played chess with his father and lost without a tantrum, didn't bother with computer games or a book, simply went to bed without complaining. His parents couldn't believe the miracle and metaphorically held their breath until the following afternoon when the same thing happened.

The two boys became best friends, and while Virtue and Angelique were putting on makeup and clothes, talking about boys, playing music, dancing, giggling over photos of film stars and boy-bands, Ingenio and Constantine would be repairing Constantine's bike, making model aeroplanes, looking through his father's microscope… always practical and worthy activities until they deemed they'd earned the right to shut themselves in Constantine's bedroom, take off their clothes and explore each other's bodies.

Ingenio appreciated Constantine's practical, down to earth nature, and Constantine appreciated Ingenio's easy going sense of fun and lack of curiosity about the reasons for his previous rotten behaviour—especially as he had no idea himself why he'd been like that. What he did know was that he didn't want to be that person ever again.

Every afternoon Ingenio would be greeted by Constantine's smiling mother who plied them with cakes and drinks and the sort of loving attention that was foreign to Ingenio's parents. While allowing the two boys every freedom, the Tollirints kept discreet, watchful and eternally grateful eyes on them, in the process gaining a very good idea of how the relationship was developing.

One sunny weekend afternoon when Constantine's mother was at her bridge club, Mr. Tollirint stood in front of a mirror practising keeping his face looking relaxed and calm. He had a fair idea of what the boys were doing, and was determined not to seem even slightly censorious. They had to trust him to trust them to live their lives as they thought best and this seemed the best way to go about it. He stood outside the door taking deep breaths for a minute, then opened it and breezed in, face a picture of benign open-mindedness.

To his astonishment, he required no effort of self control. Instead, an honest laugh erupted, he took a chair, turned it around and sat astride, leaning on the back and facing the bed on which a pair of naked monkeys were innocently cavorting; Ingenio astride and energetically impaling himself on his giggling friend's erection.

They froze and stared at the amused parent.

'What's so funny?' Constantine asked with a hint of his former belligerence.

'You two. You look like a pair of young bonobos having fun and it looks so… so natural it makes me laugh from pleasure.'

'Seriously? You're not mad at us?'

'Of course not. Why should I be?'

Ingenio, heart thumping from fear of losing Constantine, asked anxiously, 'Are you really not mad at me… not upset about…' he gazed down at an erection that seemed to have grown over the last few minutes, then helplessly back to the smiling father.

'Good heavens no! You both look wonderfully fit and healthy.' He laughed at the surprised reaction. 'Seriously, Ingenio, I doubt that anything you could do would upset me. I'm very pleased you're Con's friend, and if ever you need anything, any time, you have only to ask. And you are always welcome in our house.' He turned to his son. 'Do you agree, Con?'

'Yes,' Constantine managed to reply in a strangled whisper. 'Then you still like me? You aren't mad at us for… for doing this?'

'Con, you are exactly the son I have always wanted you to be. As for what you were doing when I so rudely interrupted… you were having good clean fun, taking pleasure in each other and doing no harm to anyone. There is nothing healthier than that. So make sure you never pay attention to horrible people who tell you pleasure is a sin. They are evil.' He leaned back on his son's desk and smiled broadly, well pleased with himself.

Ingenio was lost for words and Constantine was shaking his head in astonishment. 'Thanks, Dad! You and Mum are the greatest.'

'Yep, we're a great pair. But I forgot what I came in for; do you want to go for a swim?'

Constantine whooped in delight.

Mr. Tollirint went to his room to change.

The boys prised themselves apart and Constantine said nervously to his boyfriend. 'You've bewitched Dad! But,' he lowered his eyes and his voice shook slightly, 'Just because Dad said that, you don't have to stay my friend if you don't want to.'

'Try and stop me!'

Eyes brimming, Constantine found a speedo for Ingenio, then they raced down to wait at the car.

Twelve minutes later they joined hundreds of others making sand castles, reading, splashing in the shallows, swimming out to the pontoon and diving off. Mr. Tollirint bobbed up and down in the warm shallows before relaxing on the beach, not daring to take his eyes off the two young people he treasured.

Later, while sharing a cup of tea with his wife, Constantine's father gave a reasonably accurate account of his afternoon.

'And you weren't shocked?'

'Not in the slightest. As you know, I was prepared to be all tolerant and understanding, but they looked so sweet and natural. So innocent and yet knowing, that I was bowled over. It was… it sounds daft, but it was beautiful to see them enjoying each other. Nothing to be tolerant about. That'd be like tolerating them breathing, it was that natural.'

'But how can they know at their age?'

'When I was Constantine's age I was jerking off over girly magazines wishing I could do to Margaret Simpton what he was doing to Ingenio. No one would have asked how I knew what I wanted; they'd have accepted that what I wanted was right for me. And that's clearly how it is for them. Right. And I have to say, seeing them so obviously in love made me the happiest man alive.'

His wife kissed him on the cheek. 'Well, you trust me to know what I'm talking about regarding women's issues, and I trust you to know what you're talking about when it comes to men. That makes us the happiest couple alive.'

Meanwhile, lying side by side on Constantine's bed, the two youths analysed what had happened that afternoon in an effort to work out what it meant for them and their future.

'It means that what we do is Ok… I think,' Constantine said uncertainly.

'Yeah. It means it's normal to fuck and wank and have fun as well as do all the other things we do. Your father wouldn't have said he was glad I was your friend if it was bad or strange.'

When the realisation that it was as good to enjoy each other's body, as it was to enjoy their mind, had been absorbed into the part of the brain responsible for emotions, their heads and hearts filled with an ineffable lightness. And when they understood and really believed that Constantine's parents considered their friendship good and desirable and hoped it would last, they floated in a warm tub of happiness. Smiles grew and a contented lethargy spread as they rolled to face each other. Then, as if propelled by an external force, they placed their lips softly together and remained absolutely still, hearts so close they couldn't tell whose was beating, wondering and almost hoping that if they stayed like that for long enough they would melt together and become one being.

It was their first kiss, because they knew from internet sites that sex was only sex, but kissing meant something else entirely. It meant you liked… no! More than that! It meant you loved someone. And both knew now, deep in what the Feys would call their spirit-selves, that they would love each other forever.

At home later that evening when Virtue learned of the intimate position in which Constantine's father had found the boys, she was jealous. It wasn't fair that Ingenio should have experienced an erect penis inside him. She was fifteen and should also know what it was like. Not in her anus of course, that was what men did to each other; she had a different hole for men to put their erections in. She already got a lot of pleasure from it, but… she wanted to experience everything and it was up to Ingenio to do it to her.

Ingenio refused point blank. He loved what he and Constantine did together—it was special and sacred, and he wanted to be faithful to him. Virtue should wait till she found a man who wanted to do it to her. She pleaded that she didn't want him to come inside her; that would be gross. All she wanted was to know what it felt like, then he could pull out and she'd finish with her fingers as usual.

Ingenio offered to buy a dildo, but she wanted to feel real flesh inside her. If he liked her he'd do as she asked!

Protesting that he didn't know how to do it to a female, they searched multiple sites for the most natural method. Virtue decided on the doggy position because she didn't want Ingenio looking into her eyes in case she looked stupid. Still he hesitated, although also wondering what it would be like.

Scientific curiosity made him want to compare the relative elasticity of anal and vaginal sphincters, the ease of entry, to see if a vagina could squeeze his penis so tightly that he couldn't pull out, like Constantine could—holding him a giggling prisoner until he relaxed. Would Virtue be able to make him ejaculate even if he lay still, merely by contracting her muscles like Con did? And then he remembered there was to be no ejaculation so he wouldn't be cheating. It'd be just another experience of no significance and never to be repeated.

'Ok, but no kissing!' he agreed after five days without seeing his lover and desperate for release.

On a cool evening just before bed, with both parents at work, they showered, then Virtue knelt on the carpet in the middle of her room while Ingenio thought of Constantine, played with himself, placed his knob in position and announced, 'Ready for insertion.'

'About time! Push it in slowly.'

Virtue's vulva was no stranger to fingers, several at a time in fact, and her copious lubrication made the entry effortless. Almost without realising it Ingenio found himself up to the hilt.

'What does it feel like?'

'Nice. Push it in and out for a bit.'

Ingenio did.

'Your cock's getting fatter thank goodness, I could hardly feel it before.'

'Can you squeeze it? It still feels a bit loose compared to Constantine.'

'That's because you're not very big.' Virtue squeezed.

'Yeah, I can feel it now.' he pushed it in and out for a minute then decided he'd had enough 'Can I pull it out now? I'm getting soft.'

Instead of replying, a soft purring that arose deep in Virtue's throat quickly became a loud humming while her bum began to grind into Ingenio's belly. Alarmed, he tried to withdraw. Too late. Every muscle and sphincter in Virtue's nether regions had gone into what they later learned was benign spasm. Grunting and sweating she writhed as if attempting to free herself from the annoying worm attached to her rear end.

To Ingenio it felt as if fingers had taken hold of his erection inside the belly of the beast, manipulating him mercilessly.

'I'm coming, Virtue!' he almost shouted. 'You have to let me out!' But she only writhed the more until with a great ecstatic whinny she arched her back and Ingenio was certain his essential self had been violently sucked out through his penis. He'd been too frightened to feel much more than an almost-pain, followed by relief when the gates of hell opened and he flopped out; sore and shocked.

'I couldn't help it,' Virtue apologised later. 'At first I felt almost nothing, then your balls rubbed on my clitoris and I got more excited than usual. Then my body took over. Amazing eh?'

'No it is not! You've got a week's worth of first-class semen inside you! Con and I have been doing sperm counts using his father's microscope. I have twice as many as normal men and they're all big and active! Do you want to get pregnant? Wash it out! I don't want to be a twelve-year-old father!'

They filled a plastic bag with warm water, snipped off one corner and squirted it into the still slightly distended orifice. No creamy stuff came out. They attached a hose to a tap and caused pain and slight superficial bleeding while flushing as deeply as they could, then gave up and hoped for the best.

And so it came to pass that despite her parents' best intentions, fifteen–year-old Virtue became pregnant; confirmed by a test kit Ingenio bought at a central city pharmacy. The positive result sent her into hysterics and Ingenio into devising a solution, which appeared in the form of Simon Goldmein, a family friend who arrived the following day to stay for a week while his house was being repainted.

Knowing an abortion would never be permitted, and as both young parents-to-be were determined not to have their child adopted, Virtue followed her brother's instructions to the letter.

Creeping into Simon's bedroom at the witching hour of midnight she used her considerable physical charms to entice the unsuspecting man into a giddy night of copulation—happy in the knowledge that she had inserted a fail-proof pessary.

Three earth shattering orgasmic ejaculations during one night of lust was miraculous for Simon, whose sole foray into the lascivious life had been with a pretty, pre-pubescent prostitute when he was twenty-four, who gave him crabs. Adult women terrified him, so he had restricted sexual activity to forty minutes of masturbation while watching nubile young girls pleasure each other on internet web-cams on Sunday afternoons directly before afternoon tea.

A confirmed bachelor of thirty-seven and prematurely middle-aged—both physically and mentally, his apparent sexual success with Virtue left him so absurdly flattered he agreed to marry her when a week later she tearfully and apologetically showed him the test results and nervously confessed she must have put the pessary in the wrong way round.

Tearfully, Virtue confessed to her parents that she had crept to Simon's room and seduced him. When confronted, he agreed he should have refused Virtue's advances, but he would make up for it by marrying her. Parental moral outrage was well and truly tempered by relief that their daughter's shame would be concealed and their social standing enhanced by her marrying a wealthy jeweller.

Wisely, they pressed for a quick marriage before minds could be changed and the belly began to show. Their satisfaction in having accurately predicted their daughter's moral failure, was more than offset by their anger at their trusted son's failure to guard his sister.

The wedding, a week later, was a suitably quiet affair with only close family and friends, and passed without incident. But that was the last pleasant thing Simon experienced. Well before the honeymoon was over he was wishing he'd remembered Wilde's epigram… "Marry in haste; repent at leisure". Headaches and feminine indispositions prevented any repetition of the night of erotic abandonment with which he had been ensnared. He had shackled himself to an apparently frigid spouse whose flirtatious ways made it obvious to every other hotel guest that her desires lay with lean, tough, virile flesh—not the sagging pale and soft variety.

Like all men in that situation he became angry, cold and spiteful, closeting himself in his study on Sunday afternoons in an attempt to recapture the pleasures of singularity. And it wasn't too long before he discovered he was happier with self-pleasure because it was less fuss, just as enjoyable, and much less humiliating than begging for conjugal rights. And so the household settled into humdrum but not unpleasant monotony.

And then baby Frankie was born and poisonous suspicions arose in the minds of Ingenio's parents because the mewling babe was identical to Ingenio at birth. There was nothing of the Goldmein strain in the scrawny little runt. Suspicions were soon confirmed by the inordinate attention, love, interest, kisses and care bestowed on the infant by thirteen year-old Uncle Ingenio, whose offers of assistance and demand that he be made godfather, triggered a vituperative and violent outburst from his parents.

A punch in the side of his head on entering the house after school one day, rendered Ingenio temporarily unconscious. He awoke tied to a kitchen chair, both parents armed with thin flexible twigs with which they slashed at his legs and arms demanding the truth. Seeing no point in allowing himself to be disfigured, he confessed in wide-eyed innocence to having inseminated his sister out of curiosity. No one had told him it was wrong.

The whipping stopped and they stared at their incestuous son in horror.

'If you ever tell anyone the truth, you will die,' said his policeman father with such conviction Ingenio didn't doubt it.

'I never will,' he replied with equal conviction.

'You are an incestuous fornicator who is no longer welcome in this house,' his mother snarled. 'You have ten minutes to get what you want and leave.'

Ingenio had often wished his parents would have a fatal accident, never imagining it would be him to suffer the equivalent. He raised his eyes to beg, but they raised their switches and he scurried to his bedroom, jammed his favourite clothes in a bag, followed by his laptop, and then couldn't think of anything else. Not wanting his parents to see his humiliation, he climbed out the window and ran as fast as he could down the street. And then stopped. Where could he go? The obvious answer was to Constantine's. But wouldn't it be shameful to admit that his parents had kicked him out? What if they asked him why? Then they'd also hate him. And he'd promised not to tell anyone. He sat until dark and cold forced a decision and the beginnings of a plan. He knew there were loads of kids as young as twelve who'd been kicked out by their religious parents because they were gay, so that's what he'd tell Constantine and his parents.

As expected, he was welcomed with open hearts and arms and was soon wishing he'd got himself kicked out of his parents' house years earlier. Knowing their working hours, it was easy to return to his old home and get the things he needed. Five weeks later his father was waiting outside the school for him, offering a return to the family home and hearth on impossibly strict conditions. Ingenio was suitably grateful, but respectfully declined the offer, leaving the parents cursing their hastiness but unable to do anything about it because that would almost certainly lead to exposing the unholy reasons for kicking him out in the first place.